le 11 avril

Carmilla was able to get maybe two hours of solid, uninterrupted sleep before the haunting face of her mother plagued her dreams. She woke up with a gasp, her body covered in a cold sweat, shaking and curled up in a ball at the very edge of the mattress. Her hands were gripping Laura's yellow pillow so tight to her body that Carmilla's knuckles were white and it was painful to remove them from their grasp on the fabric. The second her eyes shot open, the basis of the dream was lost, but Carmilla's mother's sickening smile was burned into the back of her eyelids. Carmilla took a few deep breaths and relaxed the muscles in her shoulders, continuing down her back, and ending with her toes, and tried to fall back asleep to the sound of Laura's even breaths and light snores on the mattress beside her, but it wasn't happening. Carmilla's heart was beating too fast and her breathing was still too erratic, not to mention, everytime she closed her eyes, her mother's piercing gaze was staring back at her. She hastily dragged a hand over her face a couple times and rubbed at her eyes with her palms before running a lazy hand through her mess of curls.

Sleep clearly wasn't an option.

Instead of laying in bed and staring at the ceiling for what would most likely have been several hours, Carmilla carefully and quietly made her way down the hall and out into the living room and to the mudroom near the front door where Finn and Doc were sleeping soundly in their kennel. She figured Laura was exhausted from the drive and would probably sleep like the dead until well into the afternoon and that an early morning (very early morning) run would be just what she needed to clear her head of her mother. Why her mother was in her dreams that night was a mystery Carmilla didn't mind not solving. She quietly made her way down the basement steps and out to her car where she grabbed her duffle bag full of clothes and wraps and dug the dog's leashes out of the mess of Carmilla's pillow and Laura's blanket on the backseat before she headed back into the house where she quickly changed into a pair of running shorts and a sports bra.

The pups woke almost immediately when Carmilla entered the small mudroom again, this time with their leashes and harnesses jingling at her side. Both pups jumped up and excitedly started to yelp and run around the small space of the kennel like kids on christmas morning after discovering the many wrapped gifts under the tree. Once releasing the pups from their cage, Carmilla managed to get Doc's harness on without any issue, but the second she tried to slip Finn's over his head, he took off and made a beeline for the room where Laura was still sleeping soundly on her mattress on the floor.

Carmilla whispered, "You little shit," as she padded down the hallway in her socks after securing Doc to the basement door handle and mumbling a ' sitz ' with an outstretched hand, palm up, bent at the elbow and a firm tone, making sure he wouldn't take off like his brother. He ended up taking a seat by the basement stairs and Carmilla couldn't help the smug look that made it's way onto her face. She liked to think Doc actually knew what she said and that it wasn't just a coincidence that he sat down at the hand signal and authoritative verbal command, which she learned from the many summers she spent with Laura's extended family, many of them being in some type of law enforcement or military branch. She was torn from her little victory when she heard a sleepy grunt, followed by a small giggle from the open door at the end of the hall. Carmilla groaned and cursed the insanely cute little bugger for waking up her girlfriend the whole way down the hall, Finn's leash and harness in hand. She stood at the door and watched Finn as he licked Laura's face without mercy. She was laughing a sleepy, high pitched giggle that made Carmilla laugh lightly and her heart soar. She couldn't help it, the sight before her was just too adorable.

Laura eventually managed to roll her body so that her face was tucked into her pillow and away from the wrath of the puppy, giggling into the blankets hugging her body. But that didn't stop him. Carmilla watched in amusement as Finn promptly jumped over Laura's body and started licking her face as he practically burrowed into Laura's neck, eliciting a loud, shrill squeak from the heap of blankets on the mattress. Carmilla laughed, clearing her throat before lowering her voice to sound more authoritative and stepping into the room.

"Finnegan James Hollis-Karnstein, get your ass over here and let me put this harness on you. We are going for a run and you are going to like it."

Laura just giggled and hugged the pup closer to her chest, stage-whispering in his ear, "Uh-Oh, full name. You better go." Finn managed to get in an extra lick to Laura's cheek before Carmilla made it to the bed and kneeled down to pluck him from Laura's grasp. He immediately licked her on the mouth, causing her face to scrunch up in disgust with a groan and she handed him back to Laura. Laura laughed and absentmindedly began to pet the fluff ball behind the ears as he curled up into her side. Carmilla huffed, annoyed, and was extremely close to giving up when Laura stretched her hand out to grab the harness from Carmilla's grasp and simply slipped it over Finn's head without so much as a whine from the pup. Carmilla rolled her eyes and snatched the leash out of Laura's hand, avoiding the smug look on her face, and picked Finn up, tucking him under her arm before she leaned down and pressed her lips to Laura's with a mumbled ' thanks '. Before Carmilla had a chance to get back out into the hallway, Laura grabbed her free wrist and brought her back for another kiss and a soft ' how long do you think you'll be? ' whispered against her lips.

"An hour at least. I'll be back before you wake up, I promise. Go back to sleep, Cupcake."

Carmilla barely got the words past her lips before Laura's eyelids were fluttering shut and she was relaxing into the pillow Carmilla found herself snuggled into just minutes before. She placed a gentle kiss to Laura's forehead and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear before lifting herself and the pup off the mattress. Laura was sound asleep before they even reached the door.

Outside, the sun was still below the horizon, leaving only the soft glow of the streetlights and the quiet chirp of the crickets to accompany Carmilla on her run. There was a soft breeze that blew Carmilla's stray hairs from her bun and tickled her face, but it was welcomed, it felt good on her sweat dampened skin. About a mile into her run, she found a paved biking trail, lined with trees and wildflowers. She couldn't help the feeling of serenity and the small smile that snuck it's way onto her face with the smell of freshly mowed grass and the dew that sat atop it, flowing through her nose. There was no one else up at that hour and Carmilla found herself hoping the neighborhood was just as quiet when the sun was up.

Carmilla made it barely two and a half miles into her run before the dog's that had been running steadily at her side began to falter in their pace. She turned around on the path and started to head back, but only made it a few feet before Finn and Doc halted all together and stubbornly planted their paws into the ground. Carmilla rolled her eyes and briefly considered leaving them tied to a tree while she finished her run, but a little voice popped into her head at the thought, that sounded a lot like Laura, telling her that if she did, she'd probably be shunned to the couch for the remainder of the week. So, instead of finishing her eight mile run, Carmilla decided five miles was enough and picked the dogs up, one tucked under each of her arms, and ran the few miles back to the house.

So, her hour long run quickly turned into a 35 minute run, half of which she carried two 30 pound dogs. Not ideal, but it got her mother out of her head for the time being and she felt a lot more relaxed than she had when she woke up. Still not tired, but relaxed.

After showering and changing into a hoodie and sleep shorts and making sure the dogs relieved themselves in the yard and not in the house, Carmilla left Finn and Doc to sleep in their kennel and found herself in the reading loft next to the master bedroom, where she lost herself in the hundreds of books that lined the shelves of the back wall. She ran her fingers over the spines of the books, reading the titles as she went. They were organized by the year they were published, then by author. Carmilla laughed after she realized it because it was so like her father. He was always organizing everything, especially the books that he kept so close to his heart. She found first editions of several of her father's favorites, all most likely on the ' The 100 Greatest Novels of all Time ' list, but was surprised when she didn't see the novel she listened to him read thousands of times as a child. She could've sworn he read her a first edition copy. Carmilla scanned the shelf of first editions again, paying close attention to every title and author, but again, found no sign of Kipling's 1894 version of The Jungle Book . To say she was mad about it was an understatement. Carmilla just hoped her mother hadn't given it away or sold it after he passed. She would like to think her mother wouldn't be so cruel as to do that to her, but then again she thought the same thing about other things her mother managed to get away with. Specifically, mentally and physically abusing her only daughter for a majority of her life, blackmailing her and her best friend/girlfriend, neglecting her because of her sexuality, the list could go on and on.

And Carmilla was once again thinking about her mother. Funny how things worked.

Carmilla tried to clear her head with a book. She pulled out a hardcover novel at random, out of the first edition section, and plopped down onto one of the weathered leather chairs in the small nook. Without bothering to read the gold print on the faded burgundy cover, Carmilla opened the book to a random page and began reading from the middle of the text:

"'She hates her sons, takes no pleasure in seeing them. I'm afraid she's dreaming up some dreadful plan.

She is dangerous. None who makes an enemy of her

will win an easy victory.'"

Carmilla promptly slammed the book shut, laughing bitterly at herself, because really? Medea ? She couldn't have picked up... anything else ? After placing the book back on the shelf where she found it, Carmilla walked down the row of novels, past the first edition section, and picked another out at random, this time, making sure to read the title. Lolita . Although she found the book a masterpiece, she wasn't in the mood for Humbert Humbert's bullshit so she put the novel back and wandered a few more steps to the right and picked up another. War and Peace . Way too early in the morning for that one. She grabbed another. The Idiot . She knew a couple of those, but still, she needed something to get lost in. She gave it one last try. The Princess Bride . That would have to do.

Carmilla found herself easily lost in the fantasy with Buttercup and Westley in their travels across Florin and Guilder. She wasn't sure how long she had been reading for, but was only brought back to reality when an obnoxiously loud banging sounded through the walls, causing the dogs to start barking. Afraid they would wake Laura up, Carmilla tossed The Princess Bride gently onto the chair opposite her and ran down the stairs, whispering profanities under her breath. The pups were still barking when she reached the mudroom and she immediately whisper-yelled ' nein '. Finn continued to yap with his puppy bark, while Doc immediately ceased the noise and sat down. Carmilla smirked and patted Doc on the head between the bars of the kennel and made a mental note to start training the dogs in simple commands.

"This is why you're my favorite," She whispered. Turning her head to Finn, Carmilla glared and pointed her finger at him. "As for you-" She was cut off by another knock on the front door that drew her attention away from the dogs and she groaned before closing the distance between her and the person rudely interrupting her alone time with her father's prized and immaculate book collection this early in the morning.

It was a man and his partner from the moving company her sister hired to deliver all of her shit. Of course they would show up first thing in the morning. She really shouldn't have expected anything less from Mattie. While she was grateful and excited to start setting up her space where she had planned on working, having men in and out of her house at seven in the morning was not ideal. Especially considering Laura was sleeping soundly, or she hoped, just down the hall and she made sure to mention that little fact to the guys. Of course, they then proceeded to make sure they were practically silent the rest of the time they were there and Carmilla couldn't help but feel a little guilty at cursing them for simply doing what they were told to do, most likely by Mattie, who could be quite intimidating sometimes. They even went as far as to place all the boxes where Carmilla told them to and, really, she couldn't be mad at them. Laura even slept through the entire ordeal.

By the time the men left, it was nearing nine am. Carmilla managed to unpack the crates housing her paintings, organizing them into piles. One pile contained several pieces of which she deemed she would definitely be keeping, while the other pile was a total of four paintings which she decided was the start of the series she would sell to Vordenburg. A third pile, laid off to the side, contained all the paintings she was on the fence about. This pile was by far the largest.

Carmilla stood staring at the three piles on the floor in the living room, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth with her hands on her hips and a pained expression on her face. She thought selling her paintings would be a lot easier, but then again, that mindset was from before she and Laura reunited. Going through the paintings resurfaced a lot of old emotions that Carmilla thought were buried in the deepest parts of her mind. She remembers when she painted all of them, whether they were followed by nasty hangovers the next morning or mindless sex the same night, she remembers and she'd rather she forgot. Not so much the paintings themselves, but what she put herself through before, during, or after she painted them. She wasn't too proud of those moments.

It took over an hour of reshuffling through each piece, but finally she came to the conclusion that she could bare to part with one crate full of her paintings. Out of 21 pieces, Carmilla ended up keeping a total of six, three of which were different variations of Laura's eye, always the left. The first of the three paintings was one Carmilla painted after she slept with Ell for the first time. When she started painting the piece, she had no intention of it becoming what it did, but the next morning when she woke up on the couch in her apartment and found the drying canvas, she found herself staring at Laura's blown pupil, the dark brown of her irises barely visible under her half lidded stare. In a panic, Carmilla almost burned the piece in the fireplace in her living room, but instead, found herself in front of a fresh canvas with a palette covered in different shades of brown paint. She found herself painting the same eye, this time in lighter hues. Her goal being to recreate the way Laura's eyes used to light up when she was overly excited about something. Anything really. She was always getting excited over the littlest things, things Carmilla didn't really see the big deal of, like cookies, or sweets in general, or Christmas and Halloween, or pointless British television. The list could easily go on and on. The third painting Carmilla did of Laura's eye, she didn't plan for the outcome at all. The night, or early morning rather, that she painted the piece, her and Ell had their first fight, resulting in Carmilla storming out of her apartment with tears in her eyes after leaving Ell in her bed half naked and crying. Looking back she had no idea what the fight was about, but when she came back to an empty flat with enough alcohol in her system to ensure she wouldn't remember that night, she found herself staggering to her easel. The next morning she woke up to a pounding headache and a painting of Laura's tear filled gaze staring at her from across the room. In her mind she knew she shouldn't be painting the brown irises she left in the states, but instead the blue ones that loved her in Paris. Before Ell returned that morning with breakfast and an apology, Carmilla managed to hide the three paintings in the back of her closet where she forgot about them as time went on until she came across them, nearly three years later, as she was packing to move back to her hometown.

The fourth painting Carmilla decided on keeping was just a canvas covered in strokes of different shades of yellow paint. She didn't remember painting it at all, but on the back, written on the wood of the canvas in sloppy black ink, there was a date and ' Laura Hollis ' scrawled across the wood. Carmilla almost wanted to laugh at herself, looking back now. It was comical how she thought she could get away with forgetting Laura. She never did, no matter how much she tried. Even her subconscious couldn't let her go. God, she was such a sap.

The last two paintings were the most emotional and raw. Carmilla remembers painting them vividly, as if there was a chance she could ever forget. The first of the two was on a larger canvas than any of the others and there was no way in hell she would have sold the piece, no matter the amount of money. It was the first one Laura noticed when she walked into the room that first night at the gallery when Carmilla told her to meet her there. The painting was very clearly of Laura, there was no way of mistaking her. She was very clearly naked, as well. Carmilla remembers the night the scene in the painting took place. She remembers it like she remembers the feeling of her heart shattering after her mother tore her away from the only person that she ever loved.

Carmilla painted the piece almost immediately after Dr. Renou handed her a paintbrush and canvas for the first time. It was messy and anger driven, but it was also beautiful and real. Renou even went as far as calling it ' romantic ' after she saw it for the first time. Carmilla didn't think it was anything special at the time, in fact, the second she put the paintbrush down, she hated it. She hated it with such a burning passion, she wanted Renou to get rid of it, but the next session, there it was. From that day on, every time Carmilla looked at it, she fell more in love with the piece.

At first, Carmilla swiped the paint covered brush across the canvas as if she had a personal vendetta against it. The background was a mess of different light browns, the painting itself looked as though it was under a light sepia filter. While she painted the piece, it was the first time she let Dr. Renou see her cry. During the painting process, she didn't have Laura on her mind. She didn't really have anything on her mind. She was just angry, mostly at herself and her mother, but she found herself painting a woman over the chaos of brown. In a light, almost white brown, off center and more to the top right of the canvas, Carmilla carefully and with as much precision she could muster, painted Laura. Laura's back was to the onlooker as she made her way towards something in the hazy background. There wasn't much detail, but if focused on hard enough, the observer could make out a dresser and a floor under Laura's feet and the edge of a bed in the foreground. Laura was looking back, over her shoulder with a shy smile on her face, barely visible, but Carmilla knew. That post-orgasm, sleep-riddled, grin was one she could never forget. Laura had her arms tucked to her chest almost as if she was trying to cover herself up. Her hair cascaded down over one shoulder in loose curls, leaving her back bare to the audience. There was a light sheet piled around her ankles on the floor, leaving nothing to the imagination. Every feature was painfully detailed almost as if Carmilla thought she would forget what Laura looked like if she didn't put everything down on the canvas. Everything from the mole in the middle of Laura's back, to the way her spine and shoulder blades protruded from her skin and the way her muscles flexed with the way she was holding her arms to her chest, to the small dimples in her lower back. Carmilla didn't want to forget anything. Not like she could. That night portrayed in the painting would take a lot more than her mother and a few thought consuming classes to make her forget.

The final piece was a little less happy. Again, Carmilla was angry when she painted it and the thought of Laura did nothing to calm her down. The painting was more of a self portrait, but there was barely any trace of a human in the dark strokes. Maybe at one point there was, but definitely not in the final product. A sharp jawline could be made out among the black strokes over the white canvas. An open mouth, as if it was screaming. A nose, a chin, chiseled cheekbones. The rest was angry strokes of black paint, cascaded across a majority of the canvas, covering the rest of the details of the focus of the piece. The darkest strokes outlined the figures cheeks, followed by grey and fading into white and splatters of black at the edges into what looked like a large tree. It was odd and abstract and to anyone but Carmilla and maybe Laura, it was confusing and looked out of place.

Although her portrait of Laura was her favorite, it was obvious why. This one however, wasn't so obvious. It was a close second, in terms of rankings and Carmilla had no idea why she liked it, nor why she couldn't seem to part with it. It reminded her of how angry she was all the time and how much hatred she stored inside herself. Maybe she kept it as a reminder of how far she came since then. Maybe she kept it as a warning to never let herself get like that again. Maybe it was more of a warning to others. She didn't really know, but she wasn't giving it to Vordencreep.

After making sure to safely pack the paintings she was selling back into the crate and emailing Sarah-Jane back notifying her that she made her decision about the paintings, Carmilla piled the ones she was keeping on the couch and set to work on making the spare bedroom her own space. She actually managed to unpack all of her art supplies from the boxes and got her easels set up to a position she could work in, along with her blank canvases and books of drawing, charcoal, and watercolor paper. Looking at all of her shit on the floor in piles, Carmilla figured she should probably get organizers or something so the space wouldn't look like a tornado just passed through all the time, but right now she only felt like indulging herself in mindless strokes of a paintbrush on a white canvas to the mind numbing sounds of Stravinsky.

Carmilla couldn't remember how long she was sat at the easel in front of her, it could have been the next day for all she knew. Of course it wasn't, but she was so engrossed in her work that her concept of time was completely gone. She loved that feeling. The feeling of losing herself in something she loved to the point where she was completely clueless to anything happening around her. Even the sound of the music was lost to her after awhile and that was how Laura found her: sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, eyebrows knit together in concentration, tongue poking out of the side of her mouth, hair a mess, hands covered in paint, and somehow she managed to get a streak of red on her forehead, which should have been a feat in and of itself because nowhere on her palette was there an ounce of red paint. Laura never had the chance to see Carmilla in the process of actually creating her art, she only had the pleasure of seeing the final product and she wasn't about to give up her chance so soon.

Carmilla didn't notice when Laura walked into the room, she didn't notice Laura watching her with a look of complete adoration, she didn't notice when Laura stealthily left the room and came back with her phone in hand, and she definitely didn't notice the shutter of Laura's iPhone camera going off. Several times, because the sight in front of her was just downright adorable, or dare she say, cute . With the pictures saved on her phone and a smile on her face, Laura decided she should let Carmilla finish whatever she was working on while she was in her groove and ventured out into the kitchen to make her and Carmilla breakfast after letting the dogs out into the dog run.

It wasn't much, but with what they had, Laura's homemade breakfast could be considered a miracle. The eggs Carmilla used before their mini vacation back in the states were spoiled and the bread grew mold, but at least the milk was still good. Well, Carmilla's soy milk was still good. Laura's was curdling at the back of the fridge with the coffee creamer. With a bit of effort and a lot of digging through boxes labeled ' Kitchen Shit ', Laura finally managed to find an unopened box of pancake mix, a bowl large enough to keep fruit in, some sort of serving spoon, and a measuring cup that had never been removed from its package. Clearly, Carmilla cooked a whole bunch back at her apartment with Will.

After almost singeing her eyebrows off at the stove top, Laura finished breakfast with six pancakes in the shape of odd circles, oblong hearts, and one that was supposed to be a cat, but ended up going horribly wrong and, well, didn't look like a cat after she collected it from the frying pan and placed it on Carmilla's plate. She even lost one to the dogs after she tried to flip it in the pan and it landed on the edge of the island counter behind her and fell to the floor. At least she didn't burn the house down. She was going to take that as a win. After finding the syrup in a box labeled ' Probably Kitchen Shit, but Could Also Be Clothes ', Laura made her way back to where she found Carmilla still working, completely entranced. So entranced in fact, that it took Laura plopping down in Carmilla's lap with a plate in each hand and the syrup dangling from her mouth for Carmilla to focus on anything but the canvas in front of her for five seconds. Carmilla was surprised to say the least.

"Holy- Frilly Hell- What the…Cupcake?"

Laura could only laugh at the look of complete shock on Carmilla's face, letting the syrup fall from her mouth to her lap.

"What the cupcake? That's a new one."

Carmilla only raised an eyebrow, but it wasn't long before she gave up fighting the smile that worked its way onto her face at the tiny human giggling in her lap and grinning up at her like she gave her the world. And she would give her the world if she could, but it was impossible, so Carmilla planted a kiss to Laura's soft lips instead and laughed when Laura couldn't stop smiling enough to actually kiss her back properly. They ate breakfast like that. Laura sat in Carmilla's lap, Carmilla pretending to be irritated that she couldn't eat properly because Laura was in her way, and each of them stealing kisses between bites.

When they finished, Laura set their plates to the side and immediately wrapped her arms around Carmilla's waist in a bone crushing hug, to which Carmilla reflexively wrapped her arms around Laura's shoulders, even if she was a little confused as to why the girl in her lap was practically clinging to her like her life depended on it.

"Alright, Creampuff, as much as I enjoy your oxygen depleting hugs, I do need to breathe," Carmilla chuckled.

Laura immediately loosened her grip and mumbled a ' sorry ' into Carmilla's chest, but didn't move otherwise. Carmilla sighed and tried to refrain from rolling her eyes.

"Okay, what's wrong?"

Laura simply shrugged her shoulders and snuggled further into the fabric of Carmilla's hoodie.

"Cupcake…"

Laura sighed, but gave in, her shoulders dropping. She looked up to find Carmilla looking at her quizzically, her face immediately heated up, but she refused to look away from Carmilla's soft gaze.

"I just thought you needed a hug, but not just any hug, a Hollis Bear Hug... because you got up super early and you never get out of bed before the sun unless you can't get back to sleep and even then you normally just read in bed until I wake up, or at least you used to, but you went for a run instead and either you just get up super early and go for runs every morning now, which I doubt, or you needed to clear your head and yes, I know I'm rambling so I'm just going to shut up now and continue to hug you. Good? Good."

Carmilla let out a breathy laugh and and smirked as she wrapped her arms tighter around Laura's shoulders before placing a kiss to the top of her head. It was less than a minute later when Laura spoke up again.

"Wanna talk about it?"

Carmilla could only laugh, because the fact that Laura couldn't even make it 60 seconds without talking was amusing, but Hell no she didn't want to talk about it, so she deflected the conversation.

"What happened to shutting up?"

Carmilla could practically feel Laura's eyeroll.

"I know what you're doing, if you don't want to talk about it just say so, ya big grump."

This time, Laura could probably feel Carmilla's eyeroll as she mumbled out,

"I had a dream. I don't even remember what it was about. All I can remember is my mother's face, and frankly, I'd rather I didn't."

Laura squeezed Carmilla tighter and nodded her head in understanding. She knew Carmilla's past, she knew about Carmilla's dreams, she knew about a lot, despite how much effort Carmilla put into making sure Laura didn't know.

"Well, now you get to use mine as a distraction."

Carmilla looked down at Laura's smiling expression with a smirk of her own.

"Yeah?"

"Yup."

Carmilla shook her head and planted a kiss to Laura's temple, leaving her lips to linger there. They sat in comfortable silence, Carmilla eventually closing her eyes, soon followed by Laura, when a thought popped into her head that would surely get rid of her mother from her mind.

"Can I try something?" Carmilla asked shyly.

Laura tilted her head back and looked into Carmilla's eyes, searching for something, a clue maybe, as to what it was she was thinking about. She didn't find one. Carmilla was staring at the wall behind Laura's head. She looked almost nervous, as if Laura wasn't going to like what she had to say.

"Sure, what is it?"

Carmilla played with the fabric of Laura's shirt behind her back before she sighed and mumbled a long stream of words that could be translated to:

"Would it be weird if I asked you to pose for me so I could add some more pieces to my portfolio?"

Laura just laughed and removed her hands from around Carmilla's waist to place them on the back of her neck, interlocking her fingers.

"Why do you sound so nervous?"

Carmilla shrugged and buried her face in Laura's neck, mumbling something into the soft flesh there. Laura giggled, Carmilla's hot breath tickling her skin.

"What was that?"

Carmilla groaned, but lifted her head from Laura's shoulder to look her in the eye. She was going to repeat herself, but Laura cut her off with a light chuckle and a faux gasp.

"Carmilla Karnstein, are you blushing?!"

Carmilla rolled her eyes, scoffing a super convincing no and buried her head back into the crook of Laura's neck.

"It's cute."

Laura smirked, but it quickly turned into a full blown smile when she caught sight of Carmilla pouting.

"I am practically the epitome of badass. I am not cute ."

Carmilla spit the word out as if just voicing it caused bile to rise in her throat. Laura laughed again and started massaging the back of Carmilla's neck under her fingers, whispering,

"I beg to differ. You are the cutest cutie patootie to ever cute."

Carmilla grumbled, "I'm going to go throw up, now," and tried to get up and escape her girlfriend's grasp, but Laura only wrapped her arms around Carmilla's neck tighter.

"Stooop. Okay , fine how about adorable?"

Carmilla fake gagged and scoffed out, "No."

Laura rolled her eyes and started spouting off words like a thesaurus.

"Delectable, charming, suave, alluring? Rapturous? Seductive? How about pulchritudinous?"

Carmilla chuckled.

"Big words, Cupcake."

Laura placed a quick kiss to Carmilla's lips before pulling back.

"I am a journalism major, Carm, did you expect anything less?"

Carmilla rolled her eyes.

"You're just the whole package aren't you?"

Laura scoffed ' duh ' before jumping to her feet.

"So, what do you want me to do? A ballerina pose?" Carmilla raised an eyebrow with a smirk as she watched Laura try and balance herself on her tiptoes with her arms at a point over the top of her head. When she about fell over, she gave up and moved into another pose. "Maybe like a hand on the hip type thing?"

Carmilla snickered at the look on Laura's face as she tried to look as model-esque as she could.

"I was actually thinking that you would be...naked?"

Laura froze, her hand still on her hip.

"What?"

Carmilla continued to smirk.

"Naked."

Laura nodded her head once.

"Naked...like with no clothes on."

"Only if you're comfortable."

Laura's arms slowly fell to her sides as she thought over Carmilla's words, then without another thought, she started nodding frantically and blurted out,

"Sure, yeah, why not? I could totally do that."

Carmilla laughed.

"Cupcake, you don't have to."

Laura started shaking her head.

"No, it's fine. I want to."

Carmilla smirked and raised an eyebrow skeptically.

"Are you sure?"

"Mhmm, one hundred percent."

"That didn't sound like one hundred percent."

"Well, that was my one hundred percent. Now, where do you want me?"

"Uh, just...there's good."

And then it was happening. Laura was taking her clothes off, albeit a bit shakily, and Carmilla was doing everything in her power not to stare as she busied herself with trying to turn to a fresh piece of charcoal paper and find a new or lightly used piece of charcoal in the mess of art paraphernalia that surrounded her on the floor. Carmilla couldn't hide her reddened cheeks when she forced herself to look up and was met with Laura looking at her expectantly with dark eyes and a smug expression. She mentally slapped herself because, really ? Seeing Laura naked was not something new to her and neither was drawing her naked body, but for some reason, the fact that Laura was actually in front of her and naked and she wasn't drawing from memory, made this all more real and all the more frightening. Before when she drew Laura from memory, Carmilla always ended up tossing the finished product into the nearest garbage bin, claiming the lines her hands drew onto the paper weren't even close to the real thing. And now Carmilla had the real thing and she was standing in front of her with nothing but a silver chain around her neck that hung low between her bare breasts to rest gently against the skin of her toned stomach. Carmilla caught herself staring as she unconsciously licked her lips and Laura took a step forward and dropped to the ground and into a comfortable position. She eventually settled when she was sitting on the hardwood floor, her chest pressed against her thighs as she leaned into them and hugged them to her chest by crossing her arms over her knees where she rested her cheek. Carmilla decided to roll with it. If this was the position that Laura was most comfortable in, then she would do what she could with what she was given.

Carmilla weakly cleared her throat. She didn't know where to start. She was nervous and there was a tension in the air that could be cut with a knife, and if it weren't for Laura's smartass smirk she probably would have already been halfway through, but the naked woman in front of her was watching her so intently that she felt like she had to watch back in some sort of unspoken staring contest. Until Laura broke her from her trance.

"Alright, Ladykiller, you going to actually draw me or whatever it is you wanted to do? Or are you just going to sit there and eyefuck me all day?"

Well that was definitely not what Carmilla expected to come out of Laura's mouth. In fact, it was so far from what she expected that Carmilla's first reaction was to gulp down whatever pride she had left, but that quickly backfired when she swallowed and her spit somehow managed to take a detour down the wrong tube and she started choking, causing her face to turn an even deeper shade of red, which she quickly hid behind her pad of paper as she looked down to her lap and focused intently on where she was creating random lines on the blank piece of paper. When her coughs died down to a simple clearing of her throat, Carmilla worked up enough courage to look up at the subject of her current drawing. She found Laura smiling at her. She wasn't making fun of her, the playfulness in her eyes was gone and instead she looked shy and maybe three years younger when her father wasn't buried six feet under the ground and her brother had yet to join the military path of many of his family members and when it felt like it was just her and Carmilla against the world and Carmilla found herself genuinely smiling back. Her smile just as shy and laced with just as much emotion and without any more stalling, Carmilla's hand started moving almost as if it had a mind of it's own. Every once in awhile, Carmilla would glance back up at where Laura was sitting, followed by her dropping her gaze back to the paper in her lap.

This continued for almost an hour and a half. Laura didn't complain about the literal pain in her ass that started around the half hour mark, or about how she practically lost all feeling in her lower half after the first hour. She focused on Carmilla's hand as it worked to create a version of herself that she had never witnessed and that was enough to help her forget about the uncomfortableness of the hard floor she chose to sit on.

When Carmilla sat her pad down, she didn't let Laura see the finished product. Not at first anyway. Instead, she stretched out her back, eliciting a few pops of her spine, cracked her knuckles and tore out a new page before telling Laura she could move. Laura was confused at first, but she stood and did the same thing Carmilla did only seconds before and lifted her arms above her head and stretched out her sore muscles. She cracked her back with a few quick twists of her body before she bent her body over to the right side, then the left, then forward to reach her toes. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Carmilla scribbling furiously at the blank page in front of her with what looked like a fresh piece of charcoal, in her hand. Laura didn't really know what she was doing, but every few seconds Carmilla would glance up, only to quickly glance back down and continue scribbling away. When Laura stopped stretching and began to replace her discarded clothing, Carmilla halted her hand and began to pack up. When she was finished and Laura was fully clothed, Carmilla looked up to find a curious eyebrow watching her to which she simply shrugged and claimed it was for ' figure studies ', which apparently was just as important as the actual artwork.

With dinner approaching and no real food in the house, Laura suggested the brilliant idea of going grocery shopping. Carmilla was not a fan, but Laura made a promise to put away all the groceries and Carmilla couldn't really argue with that.

Carmilla was on a mission the minute they stepped foot in the grocery store. That mission being: get everything they needed in the shortest amount of time possible. Laura had other plans.

"Laura, I swear to whatever almighty power is up there, if you do not quit hitting me with that sword, I will break it in half and make you pay for it."

Laura immediately ceased her tirade of good natured assaults to the back of Carmilla's head and shoulder and held the styrofoam sword behind her back while she made sure to plaster the most innocent smile she could muster, on her face. Carmilla glared at the smaller girl from over her shoulder for good measure before turning back to the obvious, more important task at hand: picking cereals. She spotted a box of Lucky Charms on the top shelf and went to grab it, but before she even had time to extend her arm fully, a loud smack echoed through the aisle and a sharp sting radiated throughout her right asscheek, eliciting a yelp from the brunette.

" Laura !"

Carmilla immediately spun around, her hands shielding her butt from any further attacks, shooting daggers where Laura was standing with her hands over her mouth, covering her look of complete shock and amusement and muffling her giggling. To Laura's left was a small boy, probably around the age of five, the styrofoam sword at his side and holding his free hand out to Laura expectantly. With her eyes still on Carmilla, Laura slowly took a folded up five dollar bill out of her back pocket and placed it gently into the open palm of the five year old. He immediately snatched the bill from Laura's grasp and took off down the aisle at a sprint and around the corner, sword still in his hand. Carmilla could only watch, dumbfounded, as Laura shrugged before skipping the remaining distance between her and Carmilla, placed a quick kiss to the corner of Carmilla's agape mouth, and grabbed the shopping cart and the box of Lucky Charms before continuing down the aisle.

"Where did you even- How...? I turned my back for two seconds!"

Laura only laughed as she placed two more boxes of cereal into the cart.

For the rest of the shopping trip, Carmilla made sure Laura was in her line of sight at all times. They made it out of the store in a little under two hours with everything they needed on their list and probably more sweets than was necessary for two people.

Laura made pizza for dinner. Some type of vegetarian pizza of her own creation, stacked with goat cheese, figs, pears, and some homemade dressing. It was good, sure, but after managing to put Carmilla's bed frame together and putting new sheets on the mattress, and only getting 15 minutes into the first episode of season two of Doctor Who, Carmilla's stomach started making weird noises. Halfway through the same episode, Laura groaned in disgust and threw a hand over her nose and mouth before burying her face in one of the extra pillows that littered bed. Laura blamed the dogs the first, second, and even the third time it happened. The fourth time it happened, however, she heard it. Mostly because she was laying with her head on Carmilla's stomach and mere seconds before, it gargled. Laura immediately jumped up from where she was laying, so she was kneeling on the bed, and backhanded Carmilla in the shoulder.

" Carmilla , seriously?! My head was right there!"

Carmilla just shrugged and laughed at the look of pure disgust on Laura's face while she tried to plug her nose and breathe from her mouth simultaneously.

"You're the one that fed me, Creampuff."

Laura groaned and continued to hold her hand to her nose. She couldn't really argue with that. She paused the show that was still playing on the laptop on Carmilla's thighs and bounded out of the room. The second Laura reached the hallway, she sucked in as much fresh air as she could, making sure to be as overly dramatic as possible. Carmilla still hadn't moved from her position in the bed as she watched Laura with an amused expression plastered across her face and a roll of her eyes.

"I'm not coming back in there until you get it out of your system and I'm no longer at risk of dying from toxic gas fumes!"

Carmilla could only laugh.

"It's safe, don't worry. I don't even smell anything."

That was a lie.

Laura eyed Carmilla skeptically before taking a cautious step past the threshold of the bedroom and made a show out of sniffing the air. After deeming it breathable and toxic-fart-fume free, Laura slowly made her way back towards the bed where her eyes caught the slightest twitch of Carmilla's hips. Laura narrowed her eyes, making severe eye contact with her girlfriend.

"What are you doing?"

Carmilla's smile widened as Laura faltered in her steps slightly.

"Nothing."

If possible, Laura's eyes narrowed even further and the second she reached the bed, she was met with, a low, but unmistakable stream of air, followed by an awful, pungent smell and Carmilla's cackling.

"Carmilla Karnstein !"

Laura couldn't help but laugh and climb into bed anyway, because if she was being honest, she had gas just as bad.

Laura fell asleep sometime during the fourth episode of Doctor Who . Her head was lodged in the crook of Carmilla's neck and everytime Laura took a breath, it warmed Carmilla's skin just under her ear, eliciting goosebumps with every exhale, but it wasn't uncomfortable. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Carmilla fell asleep soon after with her hand in Laura's mane of hair and a small, tired smile on her face.

le 12 avril

The next morning came with not-so-quiet beeping from an overly obnoxious moving truck backing up the driveway of the house. Carmilla was not amused. More than anything, all she wanted was one day to peacefully sleep until noon, or later (most likely later), with Laura in her arms. Clearly today was not that day.

Laura opted to take care of the dogs and feed them their breakfast, while Carmilla dealt with the men carrying a stark white grand piano down a ramp attached to the moving truck. Carmilla's stomach bottomed out the second she saw it. She despised the damned thing. As beautiful as it was, it also brought with it more than a few memories of her mother that she would have rather kept buried for the rest of eternity. Memories that filled Carmilla's "dream" journal. There was no way she was letting that thing be moved into her home.

"Woah, woah, woah . May I ask what you think you're doing?"

The men carrying the piano paused immediately and looked up at Carmilla's outburst and hasty exit of the house. They each wore confused looks as they set the piano down at the end of the ramp to give Carmilla their full attention. One of the men took a small notepad from his back pocket and read it over quickly before returning his gaze to Carmilla.

"I'm sorry, are you not Miss Karnstein?"

"Oh, no, I am. I just don't want that thing-"

Laura chose that moment to walk out the front door.

"Woah, Carm, isn't that your-"

"Unfortunately. Sorry, boys, but you can take that thing right back up the ramp and down the driveway and back to wherever you picked it up from."

The men simply stared at her, dumbfounded.

"Uh, ma'am...this was sent here by a Matska Belmonde with strict instructions-"

"Fucking Mattie,"

Carmilla practically growled. She was about to turn back to the house to retrieve her phone to call a certain Matska Belmonde and give her a piece of her mind, but was stopped by Laura's hand on her shoulder.

"Carm-"

"I fucking hate that thing," Carmilla whined.

"It's a piano, Carmilla. What could it have possibly done to you. You used to play it all the time!"

" No , my mother used to make me play it all the time."

"It's a piano…"

"I am aware, Cupcake."

"No, I mean, it's just a piano. Albeit, a very expensive, elegant piano, but still just a piano that your sister obviously wants you to have."

"Well, I don't want it."

There was a pause in the conversation as Laura tried to catch Carmilla's eye.

"You don't hate the piano, Carmilla. You hate that you associate your mother with it. I know you. You would rather, I don't know, lie in a bathtub full of spiders than have anything that reminds you of your mother in our house." Carmilla scoffed, Laura chuckled. "See? Plus, if I remember correctly, you're actually pretty fantastic at it and I happen to find it quite attractive..."

Carmilla finally managed to look up at Laura, only to find her smirking at her. Carmilla rolled her eyes.

"Oh, really ? Flattery, Cupcake? You know me too well...Fine." Carmilla turned back to the men at the end of the ramp in the driveway. "You can put it in the foyer, boys."

Grabbing Laura by the hand, Carmilla led the two of them back into the house. Maybe having the piano on the house wasn't that big a deal, but it was sure going to take more than a little flattery from her girlfriend to actually get her to play it.

That afternoon, after the men had successfully placed the piano in the foyer of the house, Laura decided it would be a good idea to "get to know the neighborhood" and took her bike out for a ride. Carmilla decided she had already gotten to know the neighborhood enough on her run the previous morning and opted to stay home and cash in her promise to herself to start training the dogs. She was outside in the dog run with a pocket full of treats and both dogs at her feet.

It was going about as well as she expected it would. She wasn't even an hour in and she was already done.

"Finnegan, sit down! No! Sitz ! On your ass , you little- that's not sitting , Finn! Your brother knows what sitz means! Doc, sitz . See!"

Carmilla gestured wildly at Doc who had been sitting patiently for the past ten minutes while Carmilla tried to teach Finn simple commands in German. She went over sit, down, stand, stay, and come at least once before she started getting fed up. Fortunately, her phone rang from her leather jacket pocket before she managed to cut the training session short on her own.

It was Laura's contact that was lighting up her phone screen, with a picture of her and the two dogs. Wasting no time, Carmilla slid her thumb across the screen, answering the call, and put her phone to her ear.

"Hey Sunshine, on your way back from ' getting to know the neighborhood '?"

There was a pause and a sniffle on the other end of the line. Carmilla's face dropped.

"Laura?"

"Well, I wa -was on my way back…"

Immediately, Carmilla heard the crack in her voice, followed by another small sniffle.

"What's wrong?"

Carmilla was already putting the dogs back in the house and into their kennel before Laura even had time to answer.

"Cupcake-?"

"Can you come and get me?"

Carmilla didn't hesitate.

"Of course, where are you?"

She was already grabbing her keys from the counter and making her way down the basement stairs to the garage before Laura mumbled the crossroads she was at and the way she took to get there. Carmilla made Laura stay on the phone with her until she pulled up to the park entrance that Laura was at. It didn't take long to find her.

"Cupcake, what are you doing on the ground?"

Carmilla smirked as she got out of her car to stand in front of Laura where she was sitting on the curb on the side of the road, her bike lying next to her, the front wheel bent at an almost 90 degree angle. There were twigs coming out of the girl's lopsided helmet and there were leaves stuck in her hair. Carmilla noticed a couple of scratches on Laura's left cheek and nose and a larger scrape on her chin and the palms of her hands, as well as her elbows. Laura was sporting a very profound pout as she looked up at Carmilla through her eyelashes.

"I may or may not have ran into a curb and crashed my bike into a bush because I got distracted by a dog in the dog park and wasn't looking where I was going…"

Carmilla tried not to laugh. She really did, but the situation was just so Laura that she couldn't help it when a snicker bubbled up out of her throat and she snorted. Laura's pout only deepened. She clearly didn't find her situation as amusing.

"Carm, it's not funny! It was a cute dog...And I think I'm concussed !"

"Babe, I hardly think-"

" Carmilla ."

"Okay, okay. I'll take you to the urgent care down the road and we'll get some ice cream or something after. That okay?"

Carmilla took a seat on the curb next to Laura and examined the damage. On the surface it looked like she would just need to clean out the scrapes, but she wasn't going to argue any further with the girl. It couldn't help to get her checked out by a medical professional. Carmilla, very gently, placed a kiss to Laura's unscraped cheek and unbuckled her helmet before carefully pulling twigs and leaves from her girlfriend's hair. When she was sure Laura was leaf-free, Carmilla helped her into the passenger seat and put her bike and helmet into the back seat before she got into the driver's seat and pulled away from the curb, trying with every last fiber of her being to not glance back at the bush with a Laura-sized hole in it.

As it turned out, Laura did have a concussion, albeit a very mild one, but a concussion nonetheless. Carmilla ended up getting her multiple tubs of the most chocolatey ice cream the local grocery store had, along with a bouquet of lilies and a stuffed bear half the size of Laura because why the Hell not. Laura thought she was sappier than a Canadian maple tree, but it didn't really phase her when the end result was Laura's face lighting up like a child's on christmas morning.